City Hall: A look back on Mayor Tom Potter's decision to pull Portland out of FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force

View full sizeBenjamin Brink/The OregonianFormer Portland Mayor Tom Potter with police Chief Derrick Foxworth and Robert Jordan, former FBI special agent in charge of the Portland field office.

Former Portland Mayor Tom Potter made national headlines in April 2005 when he led a City Council vote to pull Portland out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The vote drew rare overflow crowds to City Hall and came after the FBI declined Potter’s request for more civilian oversight.

"This is not a question of mistrust. It's a question of knowing what the police officers of this city are doing," Potter said at the time. "That's my job."

The move by Potter, the city’s former police chief, furthered Portland’s reputation as one of the county’s most liberal and anti-authoritarian cities. But there were also concerns at the time that the move could delay how quickly the city responded to a terrorist attack and whether Portland offices would get the information they needed during an FBI investigation.

Portland's involvement in the task force dated to 1997, but the city's most recent agreement with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security expired in September 2004. The City Council voted 4-1 in April 2005 to leave the task force. Commissioner Dan Saltzman was the lone dissenting vote.

Before the vote, Potter and Commissioner Randy Leonard wrote a resolution demanding more civilian oversight. They wanted the federal government to grant the mayor, the police chief and the city attorney the same security clearance as task force officers. And they wanted city leaders to have deeper and more frequent access to case files, rather than the "need to know" briefings under the old arrangement, according to The Oregonian’s coverage at the time.

From an April 2005 story:

The mayor said that without greater oversight, he cannot guarantee that Portland officers obey state laws forbidding them from investigating or keeping files on people strictly because of their religious, political or social ties.

Potter and his council colleagues were scheduled to vote on the original resolution, essentially forcing the federal government's hand, on March 30. But after nearly four hours of often-emotional testimony, most from people who wanted Portland out of the task force, Potter asked for more time to negotiate with the federal government.

Since then, he's met at least four times with Jordan, U.S. Attorney Karin Immergut and representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union, who were invited by the mayor. Police Chief Derrick Foxworth, who has argued to stay in the task force, was not asked to participate.

Participants say the conversations went surprisingly well, especially given how tense relations have been historically between the federal government and the city, and more recently between Potter and Jordan.

In December 2001, Portland leaders refused to help with federal anti- terrorism interviews of foreign visitors. In 2003, the City Council criticized and called for broad changes in the USA Patriot Act.

Potter and Jordan first met in December and had a testy exchange when the FBI agent suggested that the then-mayor-elect might not want to go through the rigorous background check required to obtain a high-level security clearance.

Potter took that as a threat, and as he and the commissioners edged toward abandoning the task force this winter, he and Jordan pointedly did not talk.Close to compromise

In recent weeks, however, the mayor and the federal officials came close to a compromise.

Jordan and Immergut, for example, appeared willing to allow Potter to serve on the committee of law enforcement leaders that oversees Portland's task force. They also were willing to find a way to satisfy Potter's concern about Portland officers having greater clearance than the mayor -- agreeing in principle to downgrade the two Portland investigators to secret clearance but still allow them in FBI labs and offices.

But there were a few basic concessions that neither Immergut and Jordan nor their bosses in Washington, D.C., could accept. For example, their superiors were not willing to grant the city attorney secret clearance, something Potter insisted be part of any deal.

Federal leaders also would not change the "need to know" language standard in agreements between the Department of Homeland Security and local jurisdictions in all 100 joint terrorism task forces. Under the current procedure, the mayor gets information when the FBI thinks he needs it. Potter wanted greater freedom to demand updates.

"The local FBI made a good-faith effort in these negotiations, but FBI headquarters was not going to agree on a few very important points," said Andrea Meyer, the ACLU of Oregon's legislative director. "Clearly they did not want to set any sort of precedent for the other cities that are looking closely at the JTTFs."

Portland took criticism from business leaders and other politicians who worried about the city’s image and its ability to investigate terrorism. From The Oregonian’s files:

Beaverton Mayor Rob Drake, who has one officer on the task force, fears that the region could lose credibility in Washington, D.C., not to mention federal funding, because of Portland's decision.

"They're the hole in the doughnut. They are the biggest city in the region. Of course, it has an impact," said Drake, who sent Potter a letter several weeks ago urging him to stay in the task force but did not hear back. "Candidly, until I hear from the Department of Homeland Security or the attorney general or the president's office that they're not going to retaliate in some way, I worry."

Josh Kardon, Wyden's chief of staff, called the city's decision to reassign its officers "a missed opportunity on both sides to show that you can fight terrorism fiercely without trampling on civil liberties."

FBI officials have assured Wyden that that the quality of counterterrorism investigations in Oregon will not suffer. But the city's maverick position could create public relations problems in Washington, Kardon said.

After the task force debate calmed down, Potter -- in a completely unrelated matter -- accused the FBI of spying on City Hall. From the May 25, 2006, Oregonian:

In the latest and perhaps oddest milepost in Portland's strained relationship with the federal government, Mayor Tom Potter is accusing the FBI of trying to spy on City Hall.

In an open letter to Portlanders on Wednesday, Potter reported that a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent approached a city employee earlier this month seeking information about City Council members and city government.

"In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, I believe the FBI's recent actions smack of 'Big Brother,' " Potter wrote. "Spying on local government without justification or cause is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you, either."

Federal officials confirmed that an agent spoke to a midlevel employee from the city attorney's office, hoping that person would serve as a source inside City Hall. But Daniel Nielsen, the FBI's assistant special agent in charge for Portland, had a different take on the encounter's significance.

"We're supposed to talk to people, to develop sources, to develop relationships. It's not only common, it's expected. We can't do our jobs without the public," he said. " . . . The employee isn't the point here. The point is that (the mayor) doesn't like anybody daring to talk to somebody in City Hall without his approval."

FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Pritchett approached the city employee, who neither the mayor nor federal officials identified, on May 11. The agent and the employee work out at the same downtown gym and had crossed paths at a Starbucks, Nielsen said. The agent's supervisors did not know he planned to approach the city employee directly.

The conversation lasted no more than five minutes: Pritchett introduced himself, offered his badge and business card, and explained that although he typically focused on national security and terrorism, public corruption and white-collar crime were also Justice Department priorities.